The Singularity Is Near

When Humans Transcend Biology

In his latest, thrilling foray into the future, a great inventor and futurist envisions an event--the "singularity"--in which technological change becomes so rapid and so profound that human bodies and brains will merge with machines.

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Hardcore techno-optimism. Very boldly written; many wild speculations, but somewhat reasonable at the same time. Fails to give adequate consideration to human weaknesses, mutability, and propensity to hubris.

While it may seem alien at first, if you think about it for a minute, how many people would be willing to have an iphone or similar device embedded under their skin? A digital display panel "grown" in your own retina with the aid of nanobots? A future so wild yet so believable and paradoxically, so very out of reach of the average american. The author consumes over 250 supplemental pills daily and that alone speaks volumes about the potential costs of such a technological revolution and who will benefit from it in the next hundred years.
Well worth the read and if anyone knows what the future holds for humanity tech wise, it is Ray Kurzweil

Though not a real fan of AI, its always interesting to see proponents such as Kurzweil attempt to further the reach of possibilty. Of prime interest is his keen effort at trying to understand how the mind works, how perception is perception, and his views of reality (are we naught but holograms)..it getes far-fetched and amusing, but quite logical. Eyes that do not see, replacements of all our organs is possilbe, life until maybe 1,000. A shorter version comes loud and clear by reading and researching his notes, which are only 100 pages, but worthy of 6 months work. His charge into other fields is exceptional. Consilience at work (see wilson's book on). This kind of research will replace space and NASA, as shown by the current US presidents' changed emphasis -- only took 60 years to do so. This tome hints at success in numerous biological areas. Truly fascinating display of human ingenuity, and farseeking capabilities.
Godel, Echer and Bach are another heavy-weighted work.

Ray's analysis sounds logical to me. Advances in information technology has been changing the world faster and faster in the past thirty years, and the trends show the pace of change is accelerating. Hard to believe how much the world will change in the next thirty years. But had someone told my dad in the 1930's that his children would take moon rockets, the internet, and smart phones for granted he would have thought that was wildly far-fetched. This book is a dense read but the payoff is well-worth it in my opinion.

This book is Moore's Law dragged out to hundreds of pages: computing power doubles every two years. However, Kurzweil starts applying it to all technology and progress in general, and starts talking about the expansion of intelligence (in the form of some future machine-man hybrid) into the entire universe before 2100. In this he gets completely carried away.

It might be possible that machines can create better versions of themselves in the future, and that in turn creates an explosive rate of technological development, but generalizing it to all areas of scientific advancement is a little much.

This book is worth perusing if you can ignore the repetition and wild tangents he goes on.

Also read "The World in 2050" a shorter, better and less far-fetched book.